: made unclear or confusing : distorted or mixed up
a garbled message
garbled speech
… scientific cranks—those folks who concoct garbled and grandiose pseudo-scientific theories …—
Robert W. Wilson
Robert W. WilsonA garbled group of syllables came over the speaker.—Tom Clancy
Tom ClancyBut so much happened afterward to him that his five-day drive from Cracow to Warsaw soon became a garbled fading memory.—Herman Wouk
Herman WoukSince the algorithm relies on the absolute accuracy of everything it has read to build the file, garbled information could lead to any number of mistakes.—Paul C. Schuytema
Paul C. Schuytema
Examples of garbled in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
Accents are vague, and lines are garbled and weakly deployed.
—Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times, 28 Aug. 2023
Employing machine learning, the researchers reconstructed garbled but distinctive audio of what the participants were hearing.
—Lucy Tu, Scientific American, 15 Aug. 2023
The researchers hope to make the garbled playback crisper and more comprehensible by packing the electrodes closer together on the brain’s surface, enabling an even more detailed look at the electrical symphony the brain produces.
—Lucy Tu, Scientific American, 15 Aug. 2023
Meanwhile, as in the earlier film, albeit in somewhat more garbled fashion, there are flashbacks to earlier events.
—Dennis Harvey, Variety, 11 July 2023
By the Nineties, Pat Robertson could get onto the New York Times bestseller list with a garbled account of a conspiracy involving the Freemasons, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission.
—Matthew Gavin Frank, Harper's Magazine, 21 Sep. 2022
Lee’s contested and subsequently revised four-week study of one camp in the Kalahari in the 1960s becomes, in Suzman’s garbled rendition, the history of our species.
—Daniel Immerwahr, The New Republic, 24 Mar. 2021
By all accounts, the Twitter Spaces event was a debacle—the livestream was garbled and chaotic, forcing the campaign to relaunch from a different link, losing half the audience in the process.
—Jeff John Roberts, Fortune Crypto, 25 May 2023
Google's reCaptcha, the dominant tool around the world for implementing these checks, came out with a version in 2018 that uses machine learning to silently check humanness behind the scenes and phase out the garbled, blurry strings of letters and grids full of traffic lights.
—WIRED, 29 Sep. 2022
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Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times, 28 Aug. 2023
Employing machine learning, the researchers reconstructed garbled but distinctive audio of what the participants were hearing.
—Lucy Tu, Scientific American, 15 Aug. 2023
The researchers hope to make the garbled playback crisper and more comprehensible by packing the electrodes closer together on the brain’s surface, enabling an even more detailed look at the electrical symphony the brain produces.
—Lucy Tu, Scientific American, 15 Aug. 2023
Meanwhile, as in the earlier film, albeit in somewhat more garbled fashion, there are flashbacks to earlier events.
—Dennis Harvey, Variety, 11 July 2023
By the Nineties, Pat Robertson could get onto the New York Times bestseller list with a garbled account of a conspiracy involving the Freemasons, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission.
—Matthew Gavin Frank, Harper's Magazine, 21 Sep. 2022
Lee’s contested and subsequently revised four-week study of one camp in the Kalahari in the 1960s becomes, in Suzman’s garbled rendition, the history of our species.
—Daniel Immerwahr, The New Republic, 24 Mar. 2021
By all accounts, the Twitter Spaces event was a debacle—the livestream was garbled and chaotic, forcing the campaign to relaunch from a different link, losing half the audience in the process.
—Jeff John Roberts, Fortune Crypto, 25 May 2023
Google's reCaptcha, the dominant tool around the world for implementing these checks, came out with a version in 2018 that uses machine learning to silently check humanness behind the scenes and phase out the garbled, blurry strings of letters and grids full of traffic lights.
—WIRED, 29 Sep. 2022
See More
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'garbled.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
First Known Use
circa 1757, in the meaning defined above
Dictionary Entries Near garbled
Cite this Entry
“Garbled.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/garbled. Accessed 27 Sep. 2023.
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